Hollywood Angst

Last weekend another Fairy Tale was given the o'l Hollywood treatment and "re-imagined" to be well, completely void of, well pretty much everything that made it memorable to begin with. Lately Hollywood has been stuck in a rather odd phase. You see, it (Hollywood as a whole) has been taking classic movies, mainly 80s horror movies, Disney fairy tales and of course super hero movies and remaking them a lazy gloss of dark undertones, and explosions, and CGI, and of course rancid directing and acting.

Hollywood is in many ways, a lot like your little sister in high school. Obsessed with painting it's nails with black sharpie and writing terrible poetry about how dark it's soul is and how abysmal life has become, etc, etc. However unlike your sister who eventually got over it and put away the Fall Out Boy poster, Hollywood is still stuck with this strange obsession with taking classics and making them Dark and Gritty.

Now reboots and remakes have always been around, and a doubt they will ever go away. And this isn't a bad thing. I mean movies like The Thing (1982), The Fly (1986), and The Departed (2006) are all fantastic films, and they are also all remakes (The Departed even snagged Scorsese a much deserved Oscar). However most good remakes are successful because they bring something new to the table whether it is technology that has finally matured enough to give the story justice (The Fly, The Thing, and many other 80s horror movies) or there is a director who feels they can show the story in a new and interesting way (The Departed, Scarface). The thing is sometimes a movie doesn't need to be told again. We refer to these movies as classics. They came out at the right time with the right director and even now they just are well, perfect. 

Disney was a place of instant classics once upon a time. Their animation was timeless, their songs catchy and rich, and their stories were just magnificent. So why change something that is so obviously not broken? 

Money.

Cartoonishly absurd amounts of money to be precise. It's a simple formula really, take something that people know and just rehash it. You can have practically the same script and do all the shooting in front of a green wall, and put the phase "You've never it like this before" on the poster and boom! You've got yourself a piping hot pile of shi-- I mean summer blockbuster. 

I am going to call this process Nolanization. Now before the hate pours in let me explain. I LOVE Batman Begins and The Dark Knight (sorry Dark Knight Rises you are kind of almost unwatchable by Nolan standards). Nolan did something special in 2004 when he announced that he was going to give a more "grounded and darker" Batman. 

This had never been done before. In fact before Batman Begins we didn't know a super hero movie could be more than a ploy to sell toys. Super hero movies were for children. They were filled with ban puns and even worse acting, colorful sets and anatomically correct bat suits (I'm shaking my head  at you Schumacher).

But Nolan did it. He scavenged through the rubble that Schumacher left behind and found gold and then gave it to us (what a swell guy)! The result was a film that was a huge success both critically and finically. In a way Nolan unknowingly set up the terrible sub genre that is "Dark and Gritty Reboots". 

Hollywood would like nothing more than to copy his structure and make bat-loads of money just like he did (See what I did there?) but the thing is. Christopher Nolan is kinda sorta a cinematic genius. His craft rivals some of the best filmmakers that have ever walked the earth and his movies show it. So no, you can't take a first time director and ask him to be Christopher Nolan. It just isn't going to happen. You keep on acting like it's going to happen. But it isn't. So lets all stop this foolishness and get back to making great movies again....

please..?

And of course, Thanks for reading.